Hey Insiders!

Happy Leap Day! I'm always down to the wire with these but thankful there's one more day of the month this year :)

So guess what, we actually went back to Sapporo, Japan this month and with that, I thought it'd be fun to show you how winter is a little different there.

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Sapporo Winter Surprises

We certainly didn't expect to be going back this quickly but when the city of Sapporo reached out with an offer that showed how much they wanted us back, we couldn't say no.

If you missed it, you can check out our IG highlight which has every story we created during the trip. We'll also have our full 7 day Sapporo itinerary on the blog soon.

Winters in Japan hit different in many ways and sometimes it's in the small things.

How Sapporo Handles Snow

Walking around the city, you start picking up on unique ways that Japan approaches winter conditions in an urban environment.

They have heated street corners

In the autumn when we were there, there was a lot of work being done to the sidewalk and at the time I remember thinking, this looks awfully like heated lines, but dismissed that thought. It would be crazy expensive to install heated sidewalks right?

Well, it turns out I was right. They DO have heated sidewalks which is why major corners and sections of sidewalk are always perfectly clean.

Protecting the greenery

Sapporo diligently protects the urban greenery by building these bamboo structures to make sure the snow is braced above it.

Adventurous sidewalks

This surprised us. With the effort that's put into having perfectly clean street corners, you then have stretches of sidewalk that are death traps, consisting of elevated mounds of hard-packed, and sometimes icy snow.

I suspect that the snow comes down so quickly and with so much foot traffic, they become impossible to clear as the snow gets more and more compressed.

Good samaritans

At many street corners you'll find these boxes filled with bags of gravel. The idea is that anyone can grab one of these and drop them down on the ground to create safer walking conditions for everyone.

The Japanese Snowman

In North America, we take for granted that a snowman is made up of 3 distinct parts. In Japan, not only are they made up of 2 parts, but they're also amusingly small and kawaii of course.

Snowball Making Device

I later found out that we have these in our dollar stores but it was impressive how many kids were running around with these.

As you can see, it's not just for making balls. We saw molds for poop, Miffy, ducks, and a bunch of other shapes!

Roads

Walking around Sapporo, you notice that they just don't or can't shovel all of the snow off of the road.

Slippery roads

There are large sections of the city where you can barely see the pavement below. Since they don't use salt and aren't constantly plowing the streets, this type of build-up is inevitable.

This means that driving can be quite tricky if you're not used to these conditions and crossing the street can be quite treacherous.

Snow is piled high

There are parts of the city where the snow is piled higher than the height of a car.

In some parts, the left-most lane is barely useable either, causing for some adventurous driving.

They get a lot of snow

I thought it was an exaggeration but they get serious amounts of snow. It now makes sense why so many people flock to Japan for their JAPOW. They get enough snow to last the year by December!

No shame in having soft-serve in the winter

The smile says it all.

We had shirako

The funny thing is, at our onsen hotel in Jozankei, the waitress really didn't want to tell us what it was other than it was creamy. She wanted to see our reaction to it.

It wasn't until we looked it up that we learned that this popular winter delicacy is called shirako or cod sperm sac.

It's creamy, briny, and yes, filled with sperm.

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This Month's Travel Deals

Here are some of the top travel deals that we spotted in February.

Remember, the most up to date page is the deals page and we also share the really good ones on our special FB group.

Rebook: We recently discovered this platform but they basically monitor hotel rates after you've booked it so you can get alerts on when it drops, allowing you to cancel & rebook. Sign up here.
Europcar: Save up to 20% off rentals for bookings between March 4-March 17, 2024. This will be valid for booking periods between March 31 and June 30, 2024.
Sail.ca: Winter Big Clearance! Up to 60% off selected items at Sail.ca! (1/31-3/15)
Solis: Use code SPRING20 to save 20% off hotspot devices and data plans. If you haven’t heard, lifetime data is now included with the Solis 5G or Lite.
Airalo: Use the code MAR15 and new customers get an additional 15% discount on all Airalo eSIMs. For existing customers, use MAR10 to save an additional 10%. Starts March 1 and ends March 31, 2024.
Burton: Don’t miss your chance to get up to 70% off all final sale gear! Ends 4/1/24. Canadian sale here.
Black Diamond: Extra 10% off winter items at Black Diamond equipment! Use Code WINTER10 through 2/29/24 to save!
G Adventures: Save up to 15% on select trips with travel by December 15, 2024. You can also save up to 20% off Select Antarctica 24/25 Departures (good for travel dates from October 22, 2024 - March 13, 2025). Sale runs from Feb 2 - 29, 2024.

What's next at Going Awesome Places

March quiets down for us as it's time to get back to wrapping up our work with Shikoku and start editing our Hong Kong footage.

Behind-the-scenes, we're also working on a new design for the website so look out for that soon!

This Month in Travel

Here are a few interesting articles we found this month. This sure inspires wanderlust and could be your ticket to awesome ;)

50 best cities - TimeOut quizzed thousands of people to rank the best cities in the world in 2024.
Case against travel - A polarizing view of the principles of travel. While I don't agree with it, there are certainly moments in travel when you have to ask yourself whether we're doing it for the right reasons especially on a trip to Ethiopia.
To wrap or not to wrap - This article is very much in favour of wrapping your suitcase. I'm not a big fan of these but do you do it?